Vincent D. Mattera
Analyst · Davidson & Co
Thank you, Fran. II-VI has established a strong brand over the years by becoming the market leader in CO2 high-power laser optics and has delivered on a sustained track record of profitable growth based on leadership and quality, service and value. We remain committed to a strategic course for growth in businesses that have engineered materials at their foundation and which offer a composite value proposition to our customers that extends customers' roadmaps. A key element to our strategy is to utilize strategic acquisitions to supplement our organic growth. In fact, during the last 15 years, we completed 15 acquisitions and grew revenues over that period by over 20% compound annual growth rate. Through our acquisitions, our addressable markets and technical capabilities have been continuously expanded. Our 5 most recent acquisitions have resulted from another element of our strategy to capitalize on the benefits of vertical integration. Also, these acquisitions have given us increased market access through our expanded global footprint and have exposed us to sustained high-growth sectors, market-leading customers and new opportunities for leveraging capabilities in other parts of II-VI. Today, our business has enabled our customers to successfully compete in the face of their market realities, including when they confront significant technology inflection points in their own markets. Our current 5 operating segments address at least 6 major market segments across nearly 40 countries. And we believe we can streamline our current organization to improve our customer intimacy and our go-to-market strategies. So as Fran mentioned, we are evaluating moving to a market-based segment structure. We are currently in the planning phase but expect to ultimately consolidate the company into 3 segments that will center on laser solutions, photonics products and performance products. We expect that the more streamlined company will enable us to realize the benefits of synergies, scalability and speed and to improve the profitable returns on our increased investment in product and process developments that are core to our operational excellence and sustainable competitive advantages. For now, though, I will discuss the specific dynamics for each of the current 5 segments, and then Mary Jane will discuss the details around the financial performance. In general, we believe that from a macro level, global purchasing managers index data continue to be generally positive. While slowing growth in China remains a lingering concern, industry analysts are reporting a mostly favorable backdrop for increased global capital spending, which we believe is a favorable market condition for many of our commercial businesses, although we are still confronting the headwinds of uncertainty that prevail in the military market. So beginning with our IR Optics segment. Q3 bookings for IR Optics increased 7% sequentially and 10% year-over-year. Revenues increased 2% sequentially due to increased laser utilization from our aftermarket customers worldwide. In the North American aftermarket, bookings increased 8% sequentially, while European bookings for Q3 increased 33% sequentially, driven by a renewed demand for diamond optic windows and products for EUV photolithography systems. The aftermarket bookings in Europe were up 10% year-over-year as a result of our market share gains. Total Asian bookings increased 10% sequentially. Japan bookings increased 10% sequentially, while China bookings increased 22% sequentially due to a blanket order with a contract manufacturer. Our actions to increase our market share in China continued to be successful with the aftermarket bookings increasing over 40% year-over-year. We solidified our position in the 1-micron laser components market in the latter half of 2013 by acquiring full ownership of the HIGHYAG division. We continue to experience high levels of customer inquiry and demand for current and future uses of these products, even though our bookings and revenues are down sequentially due largely to our move to a new state-of-the-art facility for increased capacity to support our future growth. In our NIR segment, our near-infrared segment, where we produce our optical communications products which increase network flexibility and allow customers to optimize bandwidth utilization and enable network monitoring cost-effectively and reliably, bookings increased 12% sequentially through the strength in orders for our commercial optics and display optics, in addition to our optical communications components. Year-over-year revenues were down 6%, partially due to the reclassification from external to internal sales to one of the division's former customers that is now part of the Active Optical Products Group, as well as soft demand for legacy optical communication components. Our leading edge products for high-speed and next-generation networks are continuing to see increased demand, and our development of 40G and 100G transmission modules is proceeding on plan. These products form the basis of important in-feeds needed by our customers for optical transport and data center networks. Our positioning with leading systems integrators and network equipment vendors should allow us to continue to capitalize on the dynamics of the market demand and help keep many of our product developments closely aligned with those of our customers. In our Advanced Products Group, bookings increased 8% sequentially and decreased 6% year-over-year. Segment revenues increased 4% sequentially and 9% year-over-year. Our Wide Bandgap Group was a strong contributor to this growth, with our new market-leading 150-millimeter silicon carbide substrates and a new government R&D contract. We are pleased by our ability to participate in a market inflection point, as silicon carbide-based devices increase their penetration into the 3G, 4G, wireless base station electronics market, a shift ultimately driven, we believe, by the proliferation of smartphones and tablet mobile devices, especially in China. China Mobile, for example, is thought to be targeting deployments to over 350 cities in China, or more than half of the cities in China, by the end of 2014. At M Cubed, bookings were down 8% sequentially and up 9% year-over-year, while revenues were down 5% sequentially and up 11% year-over-year. We believe that the demand for semiconductor devices from advanced fabs for smartphones and tablet mobile devices is a main driver of our product demand. Like the IR Optics segment, M Cubed also has EUV-enabling products in which we continue to invest to support our customers' roadmaps. At Marlow Industries, bookings for Q3 increased 74% sequentially and decreased 26% year-over-year due to a larger blanket order in the same quarter last year for our personal comfort products. Leading bedding OEMs are incorporating our thermal electric cooling systems into their new bedding products to provide a cooling function on demand. We are excited to have been selected to be the first to the market with volume production of these types of novel systems. We also continue to invest in our emerging thermoelectric power generation product portfolio. Our EverGen thermal energy harvesting products can follow wireless sensors and eliminate the need for battery power solutions. Our EverGen power strap technology will allow customers to harvest heat from fluid-filled pipes or exhaust stacks to provide perpetual and remote power for oil and gas wells, which we believe will drive an additional addressable market for our thermoelectric technology. In the Military & Materials segment for Q3, our bookings increased 4% sequentially and 23% year-over-year. Revenues for Q3 were down 9% sequentially, affected by the lower defense spending and a change in our materials operating model to focus on recycling zinc selenide, an operating model which is going well. Overall, we are pleased to have recorded several bookings for heritage military programs, such as sapphire windows for the advanced targeting pod program, targeting system windows for the Apache helicopter and components for the joint air-to-surface standoff missile program. However, the military market continues to weaken, and concerns related to funding that could affect our future bookings and revenues remain. In response to the uncertainty, we took several actions aimed at improving our technical synergies and lowering our operating costs in our military business. In particular, we consolidated our military businesses and reduced our resources in that group by $1 million annually to fit our more integrated group. We rolled off $1 million of inventory on hand for programs where future demand is unclear. We are pursuing commercial and military opportunities that are well matched to our advanced optomechanical assembly platform capabilities. We believe these actions will allow us to maintain a solid rate of profitability in this segment, despite the near-term market uncertainties and headwinds from the military budgeting process. In the materials portion of the segment, PRM achieved positive earnings again this quarter and is progressing nicely under its new business model. Finally, turning our attention to the Active Optical Products Group. As a reminder, this new segment is the combination of our II-VI Laser Enterprise business that we acquired from Oclaro on September 12, 2013, and our II-VI Network Solutions division that we acquired from Oclaro on November 1, 2013. As our financials indicate, we are experiencing a number of challenges during our start-up mode of integrating these businesses and understanding their nuances. In hindsight, our FY '14 quarterly forecast were too aggressive, so we acknowledge that we are behind our game in terms of our revenue and especially our profitability targets. But we have found the technology to be as good as we had assessed. Therefore, improving our operational excellence and customer intimacy are areas of focus throughout every corner of the organization. We've made progress during the last 6 months on many integration tasks, including winding down some of our reliance on Oclaro for certain transition and manufacturing services, including working to complete the complex and critical cutover to our own ERP systems by the end of Q4; negotiating our own and improved supply agreements with 3 contract manufacturers; finalizing the process of assuming full control of the Shenzhen laser module assembly and test operation from Oclaro by the end of Q4; reducing the Laser Enterprise workforce by 20%, including closing the Tucson, Arizona operation; rationalizing parts of the high-power industrial laser product portfolio by either increasing the price or by discontinuing the manufacturing of selected low-margin and legacy products, though we have offered our customers the opportunity for a last-time buy to ensure the continuity of supply; reviewing the cost structure of several products and executing on cost reduction plans to ensure the cost competitiveness of the products throughout their life cycle; and finally, working to improve our fab utilization by focusing on large addressable markets and leading strategic customers. So with respect to this quarter's top line results, Q3 bookings increased by 28% sequentially, while Q3 revenues increased by 12% sequentially, with the main driver being the inclusion of II-VI Network Solutions division for the full quarter. During Q3, we saw the high-power lasers and the high-volume components product line bookings stabilize as customers reduced their pre-acquisition inventory levels and we saw a stronger demand for vertical cavity surface emitting lasers for optical navigation and data center applications. We also have intensified our design activities around single-mode 1,064-nanometer seed lasers with a number of fiber laser OEMs and are progressing well on our new industry-leading high-power bar products for direct diode applications capable of increasing the power of today's state-of-the-art products by 25%. During Q3, the 980-nanometer pump laser product line experienced strong design in activity and increased volume demand of its new industry standard 10-pin, small form factor, many butterfly pumps along with our industry-leading dual-chip pump products. Demand for these products and our submarine pumps reflects increased customer confidence in the actions we are taking, the differentiation of our long-term product roadmap and the capability of our global team. Finally, on the Network Solutions front, we continue to see a strengthening of bookings in line with historical trends of the business as customers work through inventory. We saw a particular strength in demand for our micro amplifier, which is attractive to customers based on its very low power consumption derived from our uncooled 980-nanometer pump lasers and one of many examples of the value we derive from vertical integration. Finally, we are determined to improve the predictability, stability and profitability of the business, which was for II-VI a strategic acquisition into semiconductor lasers to fill a major gap in technology platforms and to drive long-term shareholder value creation by expanding our existing businesses and customer base. Now I will turn it over to Mary Jane to walk us through a review of our overall financial performance. Mary Jane?